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Earth home powered by Mother Nature

Built with salvaged tires, empty pop cans and concrete, house needs no electricity or fuel

Tires were packed with dirt and stacked to form walls, then infilled with pop cans and encased in concrete. The walls will last 1,000 years, says Chuck Potter, who built his house almost 20 years ago. (Carola Vyhnak / for the Toronto Star)

Indoor gardens are among the benefits of Chuck and Pat Potter's passive solar home. Their grandson, Justin Hayes, left, now has a company that helps design and build sustainable houses. (Carola Vyhnak / for the Toronto Star)

Feeding the birds who keep the insect population under control is all part of Chuck and Pat Potter's eco-friendly lifestyle. (Carola Vyhnak / for the Toronto Star)

On the south side of Pat and Chuck Potter's home, 16 windows are tilted at 60 degrees to catch the most of the sun's rays. (Carola Vyhnak / for the Toronto Star)

GILMOUR, ONT.—As the walls of Pat and Chuck Potter’s house went up almost 20 years ago, so did the eyebrows.

The walls were made of used tires packed with dirt. And if that wasn’t strange enough, the Potters filled the curved spaces in between with empty pop cans and covered the whole thing with concrete.

“People already thought I was crazy,” Pat laughs, recalling reaction to their unconventional abode. “But when the house was built, completely off grid, with no overhead and no mortgage, and we didn’t have to buy fossil fuel, then the chatter changed.”

The couple, committed environmentalists back when green was still just a colour, are the proud owners of Ontario’s first “earth home.” With 1,700 salvaged automobile tires serving as the main construction material — the dealer paid the Potters $1 apiece to take them off his hands — the 2,300-square-foot house was built to last.

“These walls will be here in 1,000 years,” says Chuck, 68. “It’s the strongest wall you can build.”

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But the 75-centimetre-thick structures are only part of the story. Tucked into a hillside on a 15-hectare wooded lot 20 minutes south of Bancroft, the house the couple built by hand — with help from volunteers — runs on nature.

Relying on the sun and earth, it’s designed to heat and cool itself by absorbing, storing and emitting passive solar energy. Even on the coldest night of -40C, the interior can’t go below 10C, the temperature of the ground below the frost line.

“Nature’s wonderful. It’s all free energy,” says Chuck. “This is the most sustainable home you can build without having an impact on the planet.”

And that’s how it all began decades ago, when two books put them on the path to an extreme green lifestyle. For Chuck, it was the 1972 publication of The Limits to Growth, a controversial study warning about global economic collapse and the depletion of non-renewable resources. For Pat, who was reviewing environmental books for the CBC at the time, it was U.S. architect Michael Reynolds’ 1990 manual on how to build an “Earthship,” as he called his homes constructed from tires and other recycled materials.

Curiosity sent the couple to New Mexico to see Reynolds’ designs for themselves. Three years of manual labour and $45,000 later, they had their own version, adapted to withstand Canadian winters.

To the first-time visitor, the 30-metre-long house appears to have sprouted from the earth berm in which its north-facing backside is buried. On the exposed south side, dazzling sunlight dances on 16 sloping windows — a minor inconvenience because the 60-degree angle means snow has to be cleared off.

Inside, Mother Nature makes herself right at home, sending spring breezes through two dormer windows to play among the leaves of avocado, strawberry, jasmine, grape and fig plants.

“You can grow anything here. The figs go crazy,” Pat, 65, says of the thriving indoor gardens that are irrigated by a grey water system.

With tongue-and-groove pine ceilings and structural support posts from a 100-year-old maple, the house has a natural, healthy scent. The curved walls, encased in concrete and coated with cistern paint as a vapour barrier, offer no hint of their rubber innards.

The roof and outside walls are insulated but the floors, made from a 7.5-centimetre layer of concrete, are not.

“The key is, don’t insulate the floor or the house won’t heat itself,” Pat says, explaining that insulation would act as a barrier to the heat of the earth.

“It’s low-tech geothermal without the pipes and pumps,” Chuck adds.

If back-up heat is needed, they use the 100-year-old Findlay wood stove where they do their cooking. With other operating needs looked after by six solar panels to produce electricity, a 90-metre well, solar and composting toilets, small wind generator and plenty of dead trees for firewood, the Potters have no utility bills to pay.

They raise organic vegetables in the summer and are building a 12-metre by three-metre tire greenhouse so they can grow more of their own food year-round.

The couple was recently lauded by Bayer Canada as part of the company’s 150th anniversary celebrations. The Potters are among 22 Canadians — including David Suzuki and Rick Mercer, university presidents and company CEOs — to receive awards from the pharmaceuticals giant for improving the quality of life through science and innovation.

The award is a proud feather in their cap for the couple who hold workshops to teach others how to build a passive solar home with tires.

“We’re in crisis,” Chuck says of the planet. “Everything they said in The Limits to Growth is happening. Knowledge has to be passed on.”

They’re thrilled that their grandson Justin Hayes has started his own company, Sustainable Engineering and Design, which specializes in designing and building earth homes.

“We’re using all the age-old design concepts people don’t apply any more,” says Hayes, who built an earth home of his own in Bancroft.

Ontario now has about 40 such houses that the Potters know of. “People are just beginning to wake up,” says Chuck.

Seems they’ve gone from raised eyebrows to opened eyes.

How it measures up

One in an occasional series. Carola Vyhnak is a freelance writer living in rural Ontario. She can be reached at cvyhnak@gmail.com .

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